


In the Know

by draftlottery



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, are they dating???, not really a meet cute more like a find out cute, one young defender's journey to The Truth, outsider pov, stephen johns randomly eating cheese
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 08:01:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8971096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draftlottery/pseuds/draftlottery
Summary: Julius Honka: freshly minted Dallas Star whose talents include sleeping on a friend's air mattress, sleeping pretty much anywhere, not falling down on the first day of practice, and being pretty sure the goalies are dating, even though nobody on this whole damn team will tell him. They are certainly not professionals at being helpful, these Dallas Stars.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nadler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadler/gifts).



> hello!! happy hockey holidays!!! this is a gift for the lovely nadler, who loves the stars just as much as i do. of course it was a no-brainer to write Clearly In Love Goalies (with a teeny tiny side helping of john/patrik, i'm sorry they weren't more at the forefront but i loved them being dorky in the background too much) As Seen By One Young Star. a few notes: i take everything adam cracknell says as gospel, so his joke during the #AskShore thing about devin getting him mcdonalds on the way "home" has now made it into this fic in that they live together; tyler seguin is an irl beyonce fan so the playlist just made sense; julius honka is my very favorite so doing an outsider pov for him was a #blessing; i really hope all goalies kiss each other when they get nervous. 
> 
> this is my first ever exchange fic and i had an absolute blast writing it! please enjoy the stars being as dorky off the ice as they are on the ice. i love them and you all. happy holidays!!

Julius’ first day with the Stars is certainly that: a  _ day _ . 

 

He steps into the locker room about a full hour before practice is even supposed to start, because he really wants to stand there in silence and take a look at his stall for a while. Silence was maybe too much to hope for, in hindsight. 

 

The only phrase he can think of to describe what Esa does to him is to  _ slam  _ him up against the wall with the force of his hug, like they’re cellying, or something. He shoves pretty uselessly at the other boy’s shoulders and gives up when Esa pulls away and shakes Julius with pure joy. 

 

“I  _ told  _ you, you’re coming up this season!” Esa exclaims. He finally moves aside but swings his arm over Julius’ shoulder a second later. “Boys, I  _ said _ , right?” 

 

“He wouldn’t shut up about it,” Brett confirms, and Devin nods solemnly before his face splits into a grin as Julius escapes Esa’s grasp to give him a hug. 

 

He shakes his head as he steps away. “I didn’t think so,” he admits, shakes his head again as Esa starts to protest. “No really, because there wasn’t  _ room _ , I didn’t  _ think _ .” 

 

“You don’t take up any room at all,” Esa argues, and throws an arm back around Julius’ neck before he can complain too much. 

 

He’s finally coaxed out of the locker room for a perfunctory tour of the workout rooms and the trainers’ rooms before circling back to the players’ lounge. Julius is suddenly very glad to be sandwiched between Esa and Brett, who know everyone and seem to be totally fine joking around with  _ Tyler Seguin _ , of all people. He thinks Jamie Benn says a nice quiet thing about his play in the A, and chokes a little on his tongue when he tries to reply. 

 

The four finally go and sit on the floor toward one of the corners, Brett snagging a foam roller from against the wall and only whacking Julius with it a few times. It’s good to know that even in the big leagues, people don’t change. 

 

“Starstruck much, J?” Devin teases, as Julius loses his train of thought as the defense starts to make their way into the room. 

 

“Shut  _ up _ , I’m  _ not _ ,” he replies, which starts a tiny, rapidly escalating argument about his most awkward interaction so far. Honestly, why he’s friends with  _ any  _ of these  _ bullies  _ remains a mystery. 

 

Finally, Esa stands up, drops a hand to pull Julius up with him. “Let’s go, the worst one is probably going to happen as soon as he gets on the ice.”

 

“Over-under that he wipes out?” Brett asks, “I’m taking bets.” 

 

“ _ Stop _ ,” Julius half-whines, trailing after the guys back into the locker room. After that, it’s pretty standard, as hockey locker rooms go; there seems to be an ongoing fight over playlist control, evidenced by the fact that somebody (Tyler?) keeps putting Beyonce back on no matter how many times her voice segues into nondescript rock music. 

 

And he  _ doesn’t  _ wipe out, thanks very much, and doesn’t even turn  _ too  _ red -- he thinks -- when they all take a knee at the start of practice and Lindy calls out his name, says that he’s going to be helping out while Johnny O gets some beauty rest. 

 

“ _ Enough  _ of that, it’s not like he  _ needs  _ it,” Tyler complains, and Jamie shoves at him. 

 

“Welcome on board, kid,” Dan calls, and that’s followed by a bunch of stick taps that  _ do  _ make him flush, though the cause for the pink in his cheeks turns into exertion pretty quickly as he starts taking rushes with Dan, then with Jordie, then a couple with John Klingberg, which, Julius thought he was a pretty good skater and he  _ is _ , in the A, but when they throw him onto a powerplay unit and he has to keep up with John  _ and  _ Tyler, he feels like he’s got lead in his skates for the first time since he was about eight and learning how to skate backwards for the first time. 

 

In short, practice is fucking  _ awesome _ . 

 

The goalies are kind of doing their own thing on one end of the ice for about half of practice before they start on some point shots, and then individual forward line rushes while the defense engage in an exercise that Julius is pretty sure Coach has a real name for but is basically just keep-away up against the boards. Finally, they start some four-on-four, mostly everyone going half-speed with the drill. Julius finally gets paired up with Esa and that’s fun, getting to do some stupid set plays from the A and see if they work against NHL goalies. He actually gets one in, past Kari, and the whole team erupts in  _ oooohs _ from the boards and the bench. 

 

“Scored on by the  _ rook _ , Kari,” Jordie calls, and Dan enthusiastically bangs his stick against the boards. 

 

“I call him first game,” he yells, and Kari just shoves his mask up and sprays himself with water. 

 

Esa skates by, grabs at Julius’ jersey and gives him an awkward gloved thumbs-up as he goes toward the bench. When Julius looks back at the goal, Kari’s mask is still off, and he gives him a pretty big smile for a guy getting sweetly mocked by the rest of his team. 

 

“That was a good shot,” he says, in Finnish, which somehow makes the compliment seem realer than all the hoots and hollers from the rest of the guys. 

 

“Thanks,” Julius mumbles, quiet, and Kari’s grin gets wider. 

 

“Just try to do it in the game, and not to me, yeah?” 

 

Julius just laughs, follows Esa back to the bench, and loses himself in the scrimmage again, just so damn happy to be with this team. 

 

~*~

 

After practice, the locker room is a sweaty, happy mess -- Beyonce finally plays uninterrupted from someone’s iPhone -- and he’s just finishing up making plans to go to Devin’s for lunch and NHL16 and FIFA when he hears his name from across the room. 

 

“But I just wanted to give him his first goal,” Kari complains in Finnish, and Antti laughs like he doesn’t believe it for half a second. “I  _ did _ , stop that, it was  _ nice  _ of me actually.” 

 

“It’s his first goal in practice, that doesn’t count,” Antti argues, pulls a plain white shirt over his head. “How long are you going to be? You said you had to go to the trainer and I’m  _ hungry _ .” 

 

Kari makes a pouting face, slouches back against the stall. “You don’t have to wait if you don’t want to.” 

 

“I want to,” Antti says, sits down too, shoves at him. “Now go, you’re just sitting here and that’s not good, you need ice right away.”  

 

There’s only a little bit more grumbling before Kari stands gingerly and makes his way out of the room. Antti just shakes his head and starts to put stuff from Kari’s stall into the #32 bag like that’s routine. When Esa puts a hand on his shoulder to shake him a little and start to berate him for taking for _ ev _ er, the half-formed question on the tip of Julius’ tongue gets shoved to the back of his mind as he finishes packing up. It was probably nothing, right? Goalies were  _ weird _ . Even Finnish goalies were weird. 

 

~*~ 

 

He startles awake about an hour and a half after he gets to Devin’s place, slumped over onto the arm of the couch with the controller still on his lap. Devin’s still sitting on the other end of the couch, feet tucked up underneath him as he turns the page of a book, his own controller forgotten on the floor. 

 

“I fell asleep,” he says, nonsensically, and Devin dog ears the corner of his page and smiles. 

 

“Yeah, but I figured I should let you,” Devin replies, then adds, “Adam got food, if you’re hungry?” 

 

Julius nods so hard he gets a little bit of a head rush, probably partially from the fact that he’s  _ starving _ , and they wander over toward the fridge to fish out the remaining pizza. It’s not until he’s most of three slices in that Julius remembers that he’d had a question earlier, and is pretty sure out of all the guys he knows from the A, Devin will give him a straight answer. 

 

He finishes chewing and sets the crust down. “So -- the goalies,” he starts. 

 

“It’s not as bad as people make it out to be,” Devin interrupts, and Julius just looks at him. He hadn’t heard anybody make it out anyway at all, which was why he’d been so surprised. “Like, it’s mostly the defense, anyway, the goalies usually do alright but all the goals aren’t their faults, you know? That’s, like. Statistically impossible, I’m pretty sure.” 

 

_ Oh _ . Devin was talking about the goalies’  _ hockey _ . He’s about to ask another question to try and clarify his confusion as much as he can, but the door swings open and Adam steps in already talking, cutting himself off when he sees Julius is up. 

 

“I left such a party behind,” he says, flatly, but his smile totally betrays him. 

 

“Shut up, we’re growing and need sleep,” Devin says defensively, and bumps Julius’ shoulder. “Right?” 

 

Julius just nods very seriously, kind of sure he’s going to go back to where he’s crashing at Esa’s and go right back to sleep. The NHL sure does take it out of you, he thinks.

 

~*~ 

 

Esa actually swings by to pick him up, seeing as Julius’ own car has been abandoned far away in Cedar Park. Julius keeps trying to turn down the music to maybe ask about the whole goalies thing, even though he feels like Esa is way too oblivious to know, but Esa just keeps turning it back up, probably offended that Julius is trying to silence his horrible Swedish pop. 

 

He also finds out that he was right before; he plops onto the air mattress and is asleep in a minute. By the time he gets woken up by a crash outside the bedroom door, the light that had been leaking in through the shades is gone. He’s still rubbing his eyes when he makes it out of the room, prompting a chorus of  _ aww _ s from everyone clustered around the small kitchen table. 

 

“Why,” he says, aloud, which prompts Jamie Oleksiak to let out a booming laugh as he pats the one empty chair next to him. 

 

“You should be here, too,” he says, and leans back, looking across at Stephen, who’s shaking his head and eating sliced cheese that Julius is pretty sure he brought with him, because Esa’s fridge is frighteningly sparse. 

 

He sits, gingerly, gives Esa a  _ look _ that he hopes properly conveys his disapproval of having his nap interrupted by this foolishness. Esa gives him a very angelic smile in return and takes a piece of cheese from Stephen. “What are we...doing,” Julius says finally, after some moments of silence while everyone eats. 

 

“We’re talking strategy,” Stephen says, and John scoffs, pushes a hand through his light hair. “What, we’re not talking strategy?”

 

John wrinkles his nose in Stephen’s direction. “Unless strategy really means gossip.”

 

“It's not  _ gossip _ ,” Esa cuts in. “It's not!” 

 

“It sort of is,” Patrik interjects; John nods solemnly, totally vindicated. “Anyway, welcome to the sort-of gossip.” 

 

Julius figures he’ll decide for himself whether it’s gossip or not, and decides pretty damn quickly that it really is just all the young Stars defenders getting together to shit talk each other and overdramatize the process of guys being sent up and down. 

 

“Like, no offense, clearly,” John says (“Clearly,” Patrik adds, which earns him a hard poke between the ribs) to Julius, “But like, when Johnny gets back it’s going to be you for sure. Like. No offense.” 

 

“Maybe not,” Jamie adds sullenly. “I got a bad feeling, you know? I’m not really doing what I’m supposed to be doing, maybe they’ll send me down if Jules ends up doing good.” 

 

“I’m not going to do that good,” Julius tells him, trying for consoling. John shrugs roughly, leans across to steal Patrik’s beer after he finds his empty. 

 

“Whatever,” he says. “It’s just dumb ‘cause we have so many young guys in the back end, I thought that’s what they wanted, to get a bunch of young guys there to try to save the goalies.” 

 

A chorus of  _ Shut up, John  _ (Stephen),  _ That’s not true  _ (Esa),  _ Alright, that’s enough  _ (Patrik), and  _ Hey, that’s mean  _ (Jamie) erupts around the table. Kling makes a scandalized face and puts his beer down. “Hey, you know, I get that they can’t be traded away from each other but, seriously? We need to fix something, they’re making me crazy.” 

 

“I didn’t know they had contracts like that,” Julius says, before the other guys can jump on John again. He’s not like, that up to date with all that, but. He feels like if they both had no move clauses he would have had some vague idea. 

 

John just looks at him like he feels bad, for how dumb Julius is. “They don’t need to?” 

 

“It’s nothing, like, official,” Patrik explains, “But Nill’s a good guy.” 

 

“Yeah, he’d rather lose games than deal with a breakup,” John mutters. 

 

Unfortunately this ends Julius’ line of questioning as the other guys get so heated in their defense of the goalies that the gossip session ends fairly soon after, the boys filing out one by one until it’s just Esa and Julius left. After that, the night stays pretty quiet, the TV playing softly in the background as they lounge around on their phones until they’re both falling asleep. 

 

~*~ 

 

Julius’ second day with the Stars is only a little calmer than the first, and that’s mostly just because he doesn’t get nearly lost in the building. Practice is hard, though not as hard as yesterday’s, probably more because of the game tomorrow than any immediate change in his conditioning. 

 

It doesn’t get easier in the fact that he totally forgets his helmet -- his helmet, of all things -- on the bench in his haste to get to the showers. The after-practice meeting had been there on the ice, following a short scrimmage, and he’d been on the bench already contemplating how many showers he’d need to get all the sweat off him. Lindy talking for a good fucking twenty-five minutes had done nothing but make Julius worry for the forwards in tomorrow’s game against the Wild and make all his pads stick to him even more. 

 

So after the shower he traipses back to the ice after having made Esa promise five times to wait for him. He’s expecting just to dash out and grab it, be back in two minutes, but before he exits the tunnel he hears people talking and stops. He doesn’t want to interrupt, alright, sue him. 

 

“But it’s at home,” Kari says in Finnish. “You like playing at home better.” 

 

“Still,” Antti mutters, just loud enough for Julius to hear. “I don’t know. I just don’t wanna play like shit.” 

 

Kari’s laugh echoes around the empty rink. “Nobody wants to play like shit,” he replies, “And you’re not going to. You’re going to play really well, you always do.” 

 

“You have to say that,” Antti complains, and Julius thinks there’s enough of a break in the conversation for him to dart out and wave awkwardly, grab the helmet and go. 

 

He steps out of the tunnel, immediately turns and retreats back into the half dark, and sprints all the way back up, practically crashing into Esa in the process. 

 

“Did you -- you forgot the one thing you went for,” Esa says, like he’s really very fed up with Julius. “Come  _ on _ , we’re starving.” 

 

“Why didn’t you tell me,” Julius demands. “I  _ knew  _ it, and I kept trying to ask, but nobody would  _ tell  _ me.” When Esa just gives him a confused look, he glares at John, then Patrik, who are both waiting, too. “ _ None  _ of you were  _ clear!  _ About a  _ happy thing! _ ”

 

“Can we please go,” John whines, “I’m dying.” 

 

“Nobody would tell you what?” Esa asks, and Julius throws his hands into the air in frustration. 

 

“That the goalies are, you know, you know!” His voice is rising, he realizes, so he drops it to a whisper. “You know!  _ Kissing _ !” 

 

All three of them just stare at him. 

 

“Well, yeah,” Esa says, as John moans, “Everybody  _ knows  _ that, can we  _ please  _ go get food.” 

 

Julius just stares at them, flabbergasted, feeling very much like he’s let his countrymen down by not being in the know, and just accepts the arm Patrik flings over his shoulders.

 

“Welcome to the team, now you know all our secrets,” he says, very seriously. 

 

“Well, not  _ all _ ,” John says, and waves the start of Julius’ question off as he makes his way toward the door. 

 

Honestly. Day Two and already there were secret(s) to know. Julius loves this team and everything, honest he does, but he’s fairly mostly sure there’s only so much gossip he can take. He considers making them pledge to keep it to a minimum at lunch but decides against it. He’s been welcomed to the team now, after all. He really should be in the know. 

  
  
  



End file.
